LIFE During Wartime sees fearless US film-maker Todd Solondz revisit the dysfunctional middle-class family who bowed in his 1998 indie milestone Happiness.
Solondz’s meagre output since then has tended to be labelled “for fans only”, but this darker-than-black comedy, while falling short of his very best work, suggests he has lost none of his courage or focus.
Allison Janney (CJ from TV’s The West Wing) stands out among an impressive ensemble cast which also includes Michael Lerner (from the Coens’ Barton Fink and A Serious Man), Charlotte Rampling in a close-to show-stealing cameo, and the much maligned but often fascinating Paul (Pee-wee) Reubens.
Ciaran Hinds is brooding and inconsolable as just-out-of-prison paedophile Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker in Happiness), while troubled sisters Helen, Joy and Trish are now played by Ally Sheedy, Shirley Henderson and Janney (the same roles were played by Lara Flynn Boyle, Jane Adams and Cynthia Stevenson in the first movie).
The theme of forgiving and forgetting – and quite what to do when one or both is not a sane option – is hammered home every time one of the characters says “forgive” or “forget”, or “forgiving” or “forgetting”, which is often. Even the title song is regularly punctuated by the “f” words.
But if Solondz sometimes lacks subtlety, and his preoccupations have changed little since Happiness, his very personal vision is still in evidence and his independent spirit alive and ready for anything.
Life During Wartime seems to catch the three sisters emerging from one personal Hell just in time to plunge into another, the picture darkened further by post-9/11 America’s moral and political quagmire.
All three have made some attempt to “move on” from the past but each new move, new relationship or chance at “happiness” is thwarted by the crushing disappointments and excruciating embarrassments that inevitably lie in wait. The suicides aren’t painless.
Writer-director Solondz’s film-making contemporaries David Lynch and David Cronenberg have proved adept at creating and maintaining an off-kilter atmosphere, conducting their casts in precise ways of playing to achieve a particular pitch and tone.
While never gaining the same kudos as those other impressive US indies, Solondz has pulled off a similar trick in the past and does so again here.
Lynch famously plays music on set to help create “the mood” and you can imagine Solondz’s Life During Wartime cast tuned into the eclectic musical soundtrack, a mix of pieces which all fit beautifully.
An award-winner at the Venice Film Festival, Life During Wartime is a concise 98 minutes compared to Happiness at 134.
It may lack the previous film’s scope and power but exerts its own distinct grip as a series of deliciously sour sketches loaded with a creeping certainty all is not well.
Life During Wartime is available on DVD from July 12.